


this was always the ending

by soapboxblues



Category: Fringe
Genre: 5 Acts Meme, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-27
Updated: 2012-04-27
Packaged: 2017-11-04 09:42:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soapboxblues/pseuds/soapboxblues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Someday,</i> Olivia's mother says, <i>you'll meet a man who will love you for you</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	this was always the ending

_Someday,_ Olivia's mother says, _you'll meet a man who will love you for you_

This is when Olivia is five and Bryce Sparks tells everyone that he likes girls with red hair. This is her mother's response when she gets caught at school trying to color in her hair with a red marker.

"But what would it matter?" Olivia says, "I'd still be me. I'd just have red hair."

Her mother twirls a lock of Olivia's hair around her finger and smiles down at it. It matters.

Olivia doesn't understand at the time but she washes the stuff out.

This memory is the only one that stays through both versions of herself.

\---

Peter disappears - this was always the ending.

So do the memories. Slowly but surely - they fade away. Olivia clutches to them, but the tighter she pulls, the deeper they retreat, until she barely remembers his face. What it feels like to be loved by someone like him. The steady routine of being with someone else, someone she could trust. Those emotions leave too, though they're not gone for good. They hide in the corners, part of a learning experience she wishes never happened.

The other memories return to take their place, but they are like toddlers learning to walk. Unsteady, wobbling around her mind, trying to find their balance. All the good and all the bad rattling around in her head, wanting to be heard. Her head hurts constantly now. It keeps her from dwelling on the ache in her heart.

Because Peter doesn't just disappear.

Peter leaves and apparently this was always the ending.

\---

He starts acting strange around the time her memories start to fade. She knows it's no coincidence, but neither of them mention it. Not until it's unavoidable. Until The Observer looks them in the eyes and says, _you're fooling yourselves_ in politer and more elaborate terms.

They go home and say nothing. Lie face to face in bed and stare at each other waiting for a sign that their signs weren't wrong. It doesn't come. Olivia blinks and there are tears there - she never used to cry before. Peter sighs heavily, reaches over to wipe away the tracks on her cheeks. She lets him.

"I have to go," Peter says and there's no sadness there. She only sees guilt, and is reminded of a time when it was a good thing to catch guilt on a man's face - when her job was all about putting guilty men behind bars. Better, easier times.

"I know," Olivia says. _I could be her_ is on the tip of her tongue, but she never says it. She still has her pride and the ideal that some day someone should love her for her and not some less or more tragic version of herself.

\---

Peter finds his way home - The Observer tells her this is a reoccurring theme for Peter and Olivia. The way he says _Olivia_ \- it's a small thing to even notice, an inflection or a quirk of the lips, she can't even be sure - the name Olivia is not the same. It's meant for Peter in a way hers never was.

\---

Lincoln's memories pull at her the most.

There was something there - something on the cusp that could have grown into something real. Something that wouldn't have disappeared. Lincoln looked at her like she was special, and she felt it deep down - the stirrings of something good. Lincoln told Peter once that Olivia never looked at him like she looked at Peter. Now that she remembers she wants to tell Lincoln it wasn't because she didn't feel things, but rather, it was that she didn't know how to feel them - how to show them. It was all baby steps. Progress. She wishes she had a name for it.

But Lincoln isn't here. He's Over There and Olivia has already hurt him too much to bridge that gap until she's sure they're both ready.

\---

Over the next few months, she repairs her relationship with Nina. She reaches out to her sister. She focuses on work. She does what she would normally do and it feels fine. Some days she misses the intimacy so much that her skin itches with want. But it's the idea of someone next to her that she misses and not Peter himself and that's a good thing. On those days, she focuses on the bridges she hasn't burned. A hug from Nina, a pat on the back from Walter, the laughter in her niece's voice on the phone - those little things become enough to keep moving forward.

She starts talking to Lincoln again. She can't pick up the phone and call him when he's there, but there are typewriters. It seems silly at first, but he keeps responding to her messages so she keeps sending them. They stick to the easy stuff. Cases. The weather. The differences between their world and the other one.

Sometimes Olivia tells him she's sorry.

Lincoln never responds to those.

\---

The Observer tells her how to catch David Robert Jones.

He also tells her to find love again. She tells him she's always been creeped out by how invested he is in her love life.

He smiles that weird smile again and tells her Lincoln will give her another chance. She says nothing.

When they catch David Robert Jones and Lincoln writes to say he's coming home, she doesn't thank him.

He still whispers _you're welcome_ before he disappears.

She still thinks it's creepy.

\---

Lincoln's scheduled to come back home on her day off - her first in three weeks. She thinks about meeting him at the Bridge, but then decides against it. Instead she lingers outside his apartment for two hours. He never said exactly when he was coming back and she wasn't even sure he'd come back to this place, but she didn't want to do this at work and she doesn't know if she could pick up the phone and figure out a place to meet when the sound of his voice might send her retreating back into her shell or blurting everything out over the phone. Her impulses were always her best character trait except in her personal life when they really weren't.

Lincoln arrives just after one o'clock. He rounds the corner and after a brief look of confusion, he smiles and it's so warm and welcome that Olivia doesn't know how she could have ever forgotten it. Before she can say anything he's pulling her into a hug. Her arms stay awkward at her sides for a second before tentatively curling up his back and holding onto his shoulders.

"I missed you," he says and she still has no idea what to say.

"I missed you too," she says finally.

He withdraws from their embrace, hands still on her shoulders squaring her in front of him. He takes a long appraising look at her and then grins. "It's really you, huh?"

"I'm sorry," she blurts out as soon as the words escape his mouth because it felt like an opening, and his face falls a little, mostly in confusion. She sighs, "I know you don't want to hear it, but I have to say it."

"You don't have anything to be sorry for," he says, but she can see the lingering traces of hurt in his eyes, how painful it was for him to start to care for someone only to have them forget it existed. His hands move from her shoulders down to her hands, clasping onto them and squeezing reassuringly. "You were a different person at the time. The Olivia I first met - the woman you are now - they wouldn't have given up so easily on their life - on their family - not for a man they had barely known."

"It's not fair," Olivia says, and she feels the pressure building behind her eyes. She tries to push down the emotion, but it's hard when Lincoln's being so wonderful and she can't help thinking she doesn't deserve this - this kindness and understanding and trust.

"No it's not," Lincoln says, quietly, "But it's over now. And we're all still here."

Olivia stares down at their hands, intertwines their fingers and thinks that maybe it's enough. She looks up and smiles. "Would you like to get coffee sometime?"

"We don't have the best track record with coffee," Lincoln laughs and Olivia allows herself to laugh too, "How about you come upstairs and I'll make you some tea."

Olivia nods, "That would be nice."

Lincoln hesitates and then leans forward pressing his lips against the corner of her cheek. Olivia feels the blush on her cheek the moment his lips back contact and they both smile like teenagers when he pulls back. "Baby steps, right?"

He tugs her hand and leads her inside.

They take it one moment at a time.

This was always the ending.


End file.
